Lot 2118 Dα

After the success of the first balloon flight by the Montgolfier brothers (15th June 1783), there was great interest in such experiments throughout Europe. In Venice, after a first unsuccessful attempt, the Zanchi brothers built a "globo areostatico ad aria infiammabile" with a diameter of over 20 feet in February 1784, which hovered in the air for over two hours, piloted by Count Zambeccari. The event attracted so much interest and fame that it was even adopted as a decorative motif by the Cozzi porcelain factory.

In Venetian painting, Francesco Guardi was the first to depict the unusual event. His painting is now in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin and is the direct model for the present painting. Zanin, however, did not copy the motif directly, but transformed it in his own personal way by framing the depiction in a different architectural surround and adding figures to the spectators.

Inspired by the strong demand on the market in the 19th century, Francesco Zanin, together with artists such as Ippolito Caffi, Giovanni Grubacs and other Venetian painters, looked back to the last decades of the previous century, when the Venetian veduta had reached its highest degree of perfection.